State of Mind

The very first essay question I can ever remember tackling ws in second or third grade, when we were supposed to discuss which of the Seven Dwarfs we most resembled. In my case it was an easy call, since I had just experienced an early allergy attack, so I put my claim on Sneezy. As I grew older, though, I grew in and out of other identities. Antihistamine pills rendered me Sleepy, and occasionally Dopey. An inhibited ego left me Bashful. Then the pursuit of a Ph.D. in literature turned me into a Doc, a comfortable identity for a long while.

I never experienced enough extended long-term joy to characterize myself as Happy, though the last few agreeable months rendered me a little goofily sanguine.

But this month, so far, I am definitely Grumpy. Part of this owes to the inclement weather that has consumed Southern California in an endless deluge (though the rest of the country has fared little better meteorologically). The dank hues of the day are soporific and depressing. The TV warns of mudslides and flooding and even tornadoes, a scary rarity in these parts.

Yet what right do I have to complain, given what has happened in Haiti? The destruction of Port-au-Prince has caused massive loss of life on a scale only equalled by the Chinese earthquake in 1976, and is equal in scope to the tsunamis of Southeast Asia. It is ahrd to get one's head around the scope of this disaster, and it certainly undoes any validity in my personal complaints. So I cannot gripe about my endless cold and persistent cough or other trivialities. I can watch the misery that is documented on TV and try to suppress the thought lurking in the back of my mind that the Big One is coming closer and closer to Southern California.

And my dyspeptic mood seems to match the mood of America, if reflected in the sudden horrific Republican resurgence in the polls that threatens to undo all of Obama's progressive agenda. Since I am in retirement, the issues of Health Care Reform only marginally touch me, though I would prefer something more amenable than my HMO as I limp toward Medicare qualification. Why the rest of the country is so reluctant to make changes in our dreadful medical insurance establishment is beyond me; it speaks of great propagandistic success by the Republican fear machine. And of gthe fecklessness of the Democrats, and sadly, of Obama, who never took the reins on this project and gave it the moral urgency than it merited.

Also, the stock market went down dramatically today after the Republicans regained their Power of Filibuster with their 41st senator. Yesterday the market surged upward in anticpation of this political event; today it sold off. Well yeah. Those insurance giants who stood to benefit by gaining all those new enforced clients without having any public competition or reason to lower premiums suddenly are back where they started. I hope they're Happy. I'm not.